


Once and Future Kings

by qwerty



Series: Summerpornathon 2012 [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:05:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're waiting to throw yourself, once more, unto the breach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once and Future Kings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Challenge Seven: Non-Penetration.

As heroic deeds go, saving the world is a pretty crap deal. Nobody ever talks about the part where you die, cold and alone, long after the love of your life has shuffled off his mortal coil as part of your epic world-saving quest. Either that, or you die first, not knowing when or if you will ever meet again. Almost easier, if you could simply lie down and let the end take you together.

 _No,_ he told you the last time, when you put forward the thought. _I know you better than that. You could never leave your people to suffer for one man._

But he's wrong. You would have given up everything for him, every time, but for his simple faith in your nobility that you dare not break.

And the thing about second and third and fourth chances - what people these days call reincarnation - they never work out. If you couldn't get it right the first time, without the tangle of history and expectations confusing issues all around, what are the odds that you'll figure out your happy ending, or that any ending would stay happy and not get fucked up next time round?

There is a light rap on the door; only perfunctory - Merlin comes straight in without waiting for a response, which you suppose is an improvement on the first life, when he used to slam the door open and yank the curtains apart to wake you.

"Is it time to wake already?" you ask, even though the horizon is still dark, and the moon is yet high in the night sky.

Merlin pads quietly across the room on bare feet, climbing onto your bed and tucking his slight frame into your side, his face turned trustingly into your shoulder. It is years and lifetimes of custom and loneliness that draws your arm about his shoulders to pull him closer. He sighs, breathes soft heat into your neck, and the warm press of his body spreads reflexive tingling all through your body, down to your fingers and toes with keen awareness of his proximity.

"What is it, have you remembered something?" you ask gruffly, raising one knee to try to hide your body's natural response to his, even despite his current appearance - too young, _far too young_ , barely half your age and you not yet thirty - how did you and he end up born so far apart, with so little time together before it came to this again? Another doomed ride round the wheel of fortune -

You've missed something important while railing at destiny, because Merlin is smiling sad and sweet, and leaning up to kiss the corner of your mouth; chastely, you think until he rises to his knees and straddles you with grim determination, and your breath stops.

Your hands are on his narrow hips, frozen in shock as he licks past your chapped lips into your mouth with familiar bravado, grinds his small bottom perfectly into your hard cock just the way he used to, and it takes you a shamefully long time to stop sucking desperately at his tongue and push him away when all your mind is filled with images of pressing him into the bed, his slim wrists pinned over his head, and _devouring_ that pale skin and the small tight nipples, sucking at the delicate young flesh between his legs - you push him away, gasping like a drowning man, "Merlin, stop! We can't."

"Arthur, I remember," he says, shaking, eyes bright and wet. "I remember, and tomorrow... please. Let me - " He lunges for your mouth again, and he tastes of salt and blood and thwarted love, and because you could never deny him, you kiss him, his mouth, his eyes and temples while he chokes back silent tears and clutches at you like a child heartbroken.

Sometime before daybreak, he lets himself be soothed. You let him jerk you off with an uncertain grip, let him rub himself off on you, and whisper into his ears, "Next time - next time, we'll let the future hang, and we'll lie together under the old oak tree, or a younger one if that one isn't there anymore, and we'll be kings of the present. Next time."

"Next time," he agrees, lying quiescent in your arms as light stains the horizon. "This time, we kick destiny's arse and make our own future."

And you think, maybe you will. Together.


End file.
